Translating a river's ecological quality in ecosystem services: An example of public perception in Romania

摘要

Previous studies showed there is insufficient information available about public perceptions of high quality rivers. Does the public translates correctly the health of a river in ecosystem services? The main aims of this study were to analyze the public perception of local residents in Romania on the river-related ecosystem services, based on a closed ended items survey, and to compare these responses to the scientific knowledge by a canonical correspondence analysis. In secondary, as the survey was applied on students in Geography and Environmental Sciences, we aimed to evaluate their knowledge on the subject of river-related ecosystem services. Our respondents identified a low variety of river-related ecosystem services and didn't discriminate between natural versus modified river sites and good versus moderate ecological quality. As examples, the water supply and biodiversity production were top responses for all categories of river sites. It appeared that ecosystem services were poorly known and understood when compared to the scientific comprehension. We concluded on a lack of knowledge on ecohydrological and hydroclimatic processes of the surveyed students. Improve environmental education could be the key to better translate the river health in ecosystem services, therefore to value the good ecological status. (C) 2019 European Regional Centre for Ecohydrology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.